As attacks on the façade of the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House finally come to an end, it’s easy to miss that attacks on the institution itself have been going on for years—but they haven’t come from violent mobs. They come from the Australian Government itself.

For many years, the Museum has been a leading observer of the global decline of trust in democracy. In response to ‘the lowest level recording of public trust and satisfaction with Australia’s democratic arrangements and set against the global rise of debased semi-democracies,’ in 2018 the Museum established a research partnership with the University of Canberra Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis.